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Nokia to Add Silverlight Support

, March 05, 2008

S60 first, S40 soon

Nokia has announced plans to make Microsoft's Silverlight available for Nokia's S60 platform on Symbian OS in the near future, and for Series 40 devices and Nokia Internet tablets down the road. This will let S60 application developers use an even wider range of development environments for S60 on Symbian OS than currently available. Today S60 developers can use: C++ (using native Symbian OS APIs and Open C providing subset of standard POSIX libraries), S60 Web Run-time (supporting standards-based web technologies such as Ajax, JavaScript, CSS and HTML), the Java language, Flash Lite from Adobe, and Python.

"This is an important relationship on so many levels. Working with Nokia means we are easily able to reach a huge number of mobile users, including customers of all S60 licensees. This is a significant step in gaining broad acceptance for Silverlight and ensuring it is platform agnostic. This is critical since we want to make sure developers and designers don't have to constantly recreate the wheel and build different versions of applications and services for multiple operating systems, browsers and platforms," said S. Somasegar, Senior Vice President of Microsoft's Developer Division.

Bola Rotibi, Principal Analyst at Ovum, added that "There is clear market demand for rich, Web-based services across a variety of device types, but developing these can often be commercially difficult. For Microsoft this extends Silverlight to a broader range of vendors, platforms and devices. For Nokia it expands the web runtime options on its devices, enabling a wider community of developers and more applications. This should help the uptake of higher speed mobile services and advance a new era of anytime, anywhere device-based computing."

More than 150 million S60 devices had been shipped by all licensees by January 2008. The S60 software allows for various hardware designs and software configurations, as evidenced by the S60 devices already available on the market. Through its user interface and support for new mobile services, the S60 provides an open and scalable business platform for mobile operators and third-party developers.

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